Filling in the Blanks
by Sweet16AndNeverBeenKissed
Summary: A series of scenes that fall in random order but are all part of the same story. I will strive to fill in all of the blanks. (Decidedly pre-series 3) This "story" follows the ups and downs and twists and turns of John and Sherlock's relationship as I fathom it to be. Eventually, there will be "adult only" content. I will mark those portions with an "author's note" at the top.
1. Part One (FitB)

**Disclaimer**: I do not own anything having to do with the BBC or the _Sherlock _series.

* * *

"You do not trust your hands, Doctor."

It was their first case together after Sherlock had _come back from the dead _and John was torn among fear, rage, hurt, hatred, happiness, relief and something that felt like that word that started with an "l" and that John refused to associate with Sherlock.

John gazed down at his paper and at the wavy lines outlining the walls and doorways of the building that he had drawn upon it. He pulled the pen point away from the paper, noticing the scratch marks of ink were it had been resting. The pen quivered in John's loose grip.

"Christ, John, just give it here," Sherlock said as he grabbed the pad of paper from the place on the table in front of John and plucked the pen from the other man's fingers. Sherlock plopped the pad of paper in front of himself and began to draw the schematics of the crime scene over John's original lines. He marked the point at which he calculated the shooter was standing with the word killer. His agile fingers created quick, graceful arcs marking the course of five fired bullets and added, in his spidery script, the formulas of trajectory for each shot. He marked the bodies as variables using a naming system very familiar to John after reading so many of Sherlock's own notes. The first, and only female body, was named "B1f " while the second, third and forth bodies were scored "B2m ," "B3m" and "B4m ." Sherlock marked the blood spatter of each hit to a body with nearly transparent dotted lines. He mumbled softly to himself as he speckled the shooter's area with small dots to signify that the first and second shot to the closest victim, the woman, had caused blood to alight upon the shooter himself. When he finished precisely speckling the shooter's area with small spots of ink, he signed the bottom right hand corner of the page with a flourish and proceeded to write something in very small lettering underneath. John could not read the words from his vantage point to Sherlock's left.

"There, that ought to work for your team of bumbling dunderheads, Lestrade," Sherlock exclaimed, throwing down the pen. "Oh, and the killer was a man with some sort of personal connection to the female victim. He's obviously a professional gunman, although recreationally," Sherlock said as he stood and stalked from the room. Sally Donovan gave a derisive chuckle from the corner of the room. Sherlock's head popped into view around the edge of the door frame, "And he's recently acquired a tabby." Sherlock withdrew from the room once more.

John leaned over to read what Sherlock had written under his tightly scrawled signature. John's eyes widened slightly as he read the words "with attributing artist Doctor John Watson." His hands felt slightly clammy as he pushed himself up from his seat with the assistance of the tabletop and grasped his cane handle.

First clearing his throat, John said, "Update us if anything new crops up."


	2. Part Two (FitB)

John felt _old. _He had felt like this ever since he had seen Sherlock will himself over the edge of that building to presume his identity as a dead man six years earlier. Those first years without Sherlock had been Hell for John. He had tried to throw himself into his work, procuring a full-time position at a local clinic. He had done alright for the first few months, only having one real breakdown when Harry called to ask if he needed a new flatmate because she had a friend… He had dropped his phone in the middle of the kitchen floor and crumpled into a crying heap next to it. John had later asked Harry when she had hung up the phone on her end. She had said it had disconnected after a clattering sound but the look on her face, one of masked pity, had told John that she had stayed on until she could no longer hear his wracking sobs; until he had stopped crying over his dead flatmate, his partner.

It had taken him a fair few weeks to come back to the flat but, in the end, John remained at 221B Baker Street, his stable salary allowing him to keep up on the rent. He had cleaned it up, what he described as, "a bit," straightening out the kitchen by properly disposing of Sherlock's few unfinished experiments that Mrs Hudson had been too sensitive to deal with. Sherlock seemed to have completed a majority before…jumping. John often wondered how long Sherlock had been planning his own death.

John carefully repacked all of Sherlock's science equipment and case notes. He meticulously labelled box after box with a list of its exact contents. He painstakingly packed away all of Sherlock's belongings, storing them neatly in stacks of file boxes in Sherlock's old room. John had, after much deliberation, decided to leave the Skull on the windowsill where Sherlock had abandoned him. John stripped Sherlock's bed and washed the sheets and duvet, packing them in a box labelled:

"Linens: blue, grey and green.

Duvet: blue-grey patchwork."

The only item, other than the Skull, which John decided to leave relatively unpacked was Sherlock's violin. John knew that it would not remain in pristine condition if he shoved it away into some dark corner and Sherlock would have wanted it to remain pristine. So, John placed it in its case with its rosin, linseed oil, cleaning clothes, bow, extra wire and wire snips and left it on Sherlock's naked bed, where he could get at it as often as he needed to care for it.

John's next distraction was a thorough cleaning of the flat. He scrubbed and rinsed, polished and shined. He even bought new curtains for the sitting room. He shampooed the carpets and he replaced the chipped moulding. He tore down the Victorian styled wallpaper and patched the bullet holes in the wall He painted them all with two coats of clean white primer and painted over that with creams, soft browns and deep reds. He painted Sherlock's room a midnight blue that John thought the detective would have approved of.

John could not force himself to get rid of the old, broken down sofa. He had too many now fond memories of Sherlock yelling "Bored!" while flopped upside down on its cushions. He decided he'd just have to keep the whole mismatched set.


	3. Part Three (FitB)

The limp was back. Sherlock was gone and the limp was back. John's crippling, psychosomatic falsification, however, was not what kept him up the night of August 3rd. The wind. The insatiable, unstoppable wind that rattled the loose shingles on the roof and shook the shutters open so that they could flap and bang against the window panes was what kept the good doctor awake and alert. He had tried, in the first hours, to keep the shutters locked. The limp had not helped with that. Besides, it had been useless. Eventually, he had hobbled back up the stairs to his bed and lain awake. For hours.

His thoughts had wandered. John had considered his blog, all but abandoned. He just did not have anything of interest to write anymore. Sherlock was gone and New Scotland Yard had no use for a consulting physician. He supposed he could write about his work, but that was monotonous; at best ridiculously so. John did not have a social life to report on. Lestrade was too busy, what, with the unsolved cases stacking up on his desk. Harry was _never _any real social comfort to John. He never saw Molly anymore. He had no reason to go to Bart's and see her. There were no jars of fingers or eyeballs to pick up; no apologies to make after one of his flatmate's tantrums over his non-clearance level at the hospital. John was sure Molly's life was easier now, without a living Sherlock to pine over, but John's life seemed hallow. Hallow without his annoying, occasionally outrageously loud, immature, unpredictable, insensitive, amazing, fantastic, extraordinary genius of a flatmate. Of a friend.

It was to memories of Sherlock making brilliant, sudden deductions that John finally drifted off to sleep early in the morning on August 4th. He had fallen into delta sleep, the deepest and deadest of sleeps, by 2:12am so did not hear the soft click of the lock in the door downstairs that had followed the nearly silent progression of steps up the stairs at 3:08am. John was not aware of the gentle rustle of papers in the carefully kept file boxes in Sherlock's old room. He did not catch the barely audible snap of Sherlock's violin case as it was open briefly and then quickly closed. John did not hear the ghosts of expensive, leather soled shoes as they made their way up another flight of stairs to his room. John missed the quiet groan of the hinges of his door as it was pushed slightly open. Subsequently, John missed all of these things done in reverse an hour later, sans rustling papers and snapping latches.

When John got up later that morning, to inspect the damage the wind had caused and to get ready for work, he did not notice that Sherlock's violin case had moved a hare's breath up on the mattress. John did not see the smear of a new thumb print that was not his own on the railing. John also failed to detect the tiny, barely there scratches on the inside of the lock on the door as he left for the clinic that morning of August 4th.


	4. Part Four (FitB)

John was heavily laden with bags of groceries, both his and those of Mrs Hudson. He would not allow her to go out by herself anymore; not after that fall down the stairs left her with a much more severely injured hip. He stopped by Mrs Hudson's door and left her sacks by the frame. It was a long trudge for John up the stairs to 221B. He made it to the landing and had to halt for breath before leaning his cane against the wall and fishing his keys from his pocket. He opened the door to the flat and clutched his cane before wobbling into the sitting room. "Hello, John."

"Oh, hi, Sherlock. I got those biscuits you—" John was interrupted by the clatter of groceries hitting the floor, followed by his cane landing over the top of them.

"Now, John, the eggs are surely broken," came Sherlock's drawl from somewhere in the vicinity of the sofa. And then John heard it. The first draw of Sherlock's bow over his violin strings and he was sprinting, eyes wide as saucers, across the kitchen and into the sitting room. John's eyes fell on him, his Sherlock, and his heart stopped. Really, it must have, because in the next second John had fallen to his knees, was gripping the short fibres of the carpet in his fingers and trying not to cry. He could not cry in his own dream, after all. John heard Sherlock set his violin and bow in their case. John heard the other man's soft footsteps as he drew near. John felt Sherlock's long, elegant fingers in his hair and down the back of his neck. Sherlock cupped the back of John's head in his hands and tipped the smaller man's head back so that he could look him in the face.

"Oh, that is not at all a good look for you. Up you get. Come now, John, you're stronger than this." At Sherlock's coaxing, John pushed himself up from the floor and straightened into a standing position.

"Much better," Sherlock muttered as he drew John to himself and hugged the doctor to his chest like he would rather die than be pulled away. John stood there for a moment and just _breathed_ before loosely wrapping his arms around Sherlock's narrow waist. His heart had resumed beating, perhaps with a bit of a frightened stutter. I was strange, the things that registered while one was coming down from shock. Sherlock was wearing that shirt, his favourite shirt. In that moment, John almost found it in himself to push Sherlock away and punch the back-to-life consulting prat in the face. He didn't.

After what could have been seconds or may have been hours, John was not sure, Sherlock pulled away. He kept a grip on John's shoulders and looked down at that smaller man. John looked up at him, a small smile on his face, and Sherlock grinned. A genuine grin; his first in ages. Six years, maybe. Sherlock took John's face in his hands and said, "Never again… I have made sure that I will never have to leave again." John decided that he must not have been dreaming because at that point in his dreams Sherlock always kissed him but now Sherlock just backed away, breaking John's loosely clasped hands apart, and asked if he ought to put the kettle on.

"Mrs Hudson did send me up with a lovely plate of little iced biscuits I'm sure you'll like. I think I'll open the others, if you don't mind, as well." John nodded numbly and made his shaky legs carry him to the nearest available armchair, blind to whether it was his or Sherlock's. He felt like tearing his beating heart out of his chest and handing it to Sherlock. He wanted to say, "Here it is. It's yours. Always has been. All along. You can experiment on it if you want. But you already have been, for six years, and you haven't even had to touch it."


	5. Part Five (FitB)

Sherlock did not mention the limp. He wanted to, John could tell by Sherlock's face when Sherlock walked with him. He would not say anything, though, and John knew why. It was Sherlock who had caused the limp's return and Sherlock hated himself for it. The limp was a constant, very much physical reminder of the pain Sherlock had caused John; was still causing John. The trauma that Sherlock's death had put John through was so great that John's _body _had reacted.

John had thought that it might go away now that Sherlock was back but apparently it no longer trusted Sherlock to do right by it, to stick around. John just wanted things to go back to normal but they would not. How could they? Sherlock had been gone for six years and things had _changed_. John was different now. He still had toast and tea for breakfast everyday and he still dressed in nondescript jumpers but he was not as chipper and excited to get out of bed each morning. His age had seemed to have caught up with him a bit. For his part, Sherlock was even more reserved and closed off, even from John. They no longer shared the secret smiles nor the hearty laughs they were once able to draw from one another. Sherlock did not want to talk about whatever it was he had been doing while he had been gone. The few times John had asked about it Sherlock had tersely responded with: "I am back now, that is what matters. The time and evidence of my past are irrelevant." Sherlock would then continue with whatever he had been doing, effectively dismissing John. This frustrated John to no end. He was not a servant to be dismissed. John was Sherlock's friend and he wanted to help. John wanted _his _Sherlock back. The man that so easily brushed John off, time and time again, was not his Sherlock.


	6. Part Six (FitB)

**Author's Note**: This part contains some mentions of drug use and overdose. Tread carefully if that squicks you.

* * *

The sound of pounding on the door downstairs was what woke John that Saturday morning, his first weekend off in more than two weeks. He had been hoping to have a bit of a lie-in but it looked like those plans would have to be abandoned. John pulled himself slowly and painfully from his bed, wincing as he stood into his slippers. John groped for his cane and stumbled into his armoire as he fumbled with his dressing gown. Finally, he pulled open his bedroom door and started down the stairs only to stop dead halfway to the bottom. Water, so much water, covered the floor below him. The hardwood and the carpet of the sitting room were all sodden. John heard the rattle of keys and turned toward the door as Mrs Hudson burst trough, her face stricken. "John, water is running down the stairs!"

'_Breathe_,' John advised himself internally as he toed off his slippers and made his way down the rest of the stairs.

"Sherlock!" John ventured as he neared the bathroom. He saw water gurgling through the crack between the door and the floor. John's feet were chilled as he trudged through frigid water over to the door. 'Locked, of course. Sherlock never goes into the loo without locking the door.' John looked around the sitting room and spied Sherlock's music stand in the corner. "Mrs Hudson, if you would kindly call an ambulance, I believe Sherlock has gotten himself in need of medical care that I will not be supplying," John said as he shuffled over to the music stand and leaned his cane against the wall. It felt to John like everything was progressing at half speed. Mrs Hudson finally nodded and turned to leave the water logged flat.

"Take care on the slick steps," John called after her as he picked up the stand and pulled it apart. He rested the head of the stand on the floor and picked up his cane with his now free hand. John marched back over to the locked bathroom door and dropped his cane, allowing it to tip, with a moist _slap_, to the floor. He wedged the exposed neck of the stand between the door and the frame, just above the handle; shoving it in as far as he could manage before pulling back with all of his substantial might at the foot of it. The door popped open with a wrenching crack and a gush of water followed. John threw the dismantled and damaged music stand down the hall and strode swiftly into the bathroom only slowing his stride a little at his leg's protesting pang of pain. He, unfortunately, saw just what he had expected to see and was hoping he was wrong about.

Sherlock lay fully clothed in the tub, obviously soaked, his hair plastered to his head and barely, just barely, retaining from slipping under the surface of the water. The needle or dropper or razor blade was nowhere in sight but Sherlock had surely hidden it and its accompanying remnants in a place that not John, nor Mycroft, could find.

John stepped up to the tub and leaned over, bracing his knees on the edge. He dipped his good shoulder down and submerged his hands below Sherlock's armpits, shoving and squirming them until he could lock his fingers behind Sherlock's back. He hefted Sherlock's dead weight, with much struggle, to his shoulder and hauled the taller man from the bath. Stumbling, he managed to march into the sitting room, trying not to shift Sherlock too far to one side. John laid his unconscious friend on the sofa and brought his fingers to Sherlock's neck, checking the other man's pulse. '_Slow_, but there, and steady at that,' John thought as he pulled his hand away from the cold, clammy flesh. He checked Sherlock's breathing next, hovering his ear just over Sherlock's nose and mouth. 'Strong, as if he's only sleeping,' John thought as he pushed up from the floor and shuffled away to fetch his cane, shut off the tap, drain the tub and throw every towel and piece of dirty laundry he and Sherlock owned onto the floor in the sitting room. By that time John heard the sirens of the ambulance coming up the street. He moved the laundry and towels into a heap on the far side of the room and knelt down next to Sherlock to check his breathing and pulse one more time. It was the doctorly thing to do, he decided. Besides, Sherlock would probably want the data later. Sherlock's pulse was still steady and not quite as faint; his breath was coming more often, a good sign. John touched his fingers to Sherlock's palm and felt the other man respond, wrapping his own cold fingers loosely around John's only slightly warmer ones.

John heard Mrs Hudson say, "Upstairs," presumably to the paramedics so he reluctantly slipped his hand from Sherlock's and moved from his position on the floor by the sofa to a standing one behind it. This way he could talk to the medics as well as see what they were doing without being in the way.

A woman and a man dressed in uniforms, carrying bags and other medical gear, bustled into the flat, their boots causing squelching noises on the carpet, with Mrs Hudson closely in tow. The male medic dropped to his knees by Sherlock and began to check Sherlock's vital signs while the female medic asked John the all important question: "What happened here?"

John was not at all sure. He knew that Sherlock's low heart and breathing rates had been caused by the cold water he had been submerged in but he also knew that Sherlock would not have simply fallen asleep, fully clothed, in a tub of frigid water. John's hunch was this: Sherlock, for some unknown although obviously deducible reason, gave himself a strong dose of some kind of drug. Sherlock had some sort of horrid reaction to the drug but was not in his right mind, clearly, so he decided that the best course of action in order to quill this reaction would be to soak himself in cold water. He passed out, from the cold or the drug it was hard to say, and had remained in the water, with the tap running, until Mrs Hudson had woken John. John told the medics this very succinctly by saying, "He knocked himself out with most likely illegal drugs in the tub with the tap running cold. He was probably in there for three to four hours, maybe more. He's an ex heroin addict. He's been clean, as far as I know, for a bit over eleven years. He's suffering from the onset of hypothermia and some wild reaction to the drugs."

The paramedic nodded saying, "Thanks…Doctor." John nodded once and looked down to watch as his Sherlock was poked and prodded before being strapped to a stretcher the female medic later brought up from the ambulance and carried off, leaving John with a cold rock in his stomach and shell shocked Mrs Hudson.


	7. Part Seven (FitB)

"Sherlock, what are you doing?" John asked as he walked through the door of his bedroom to see his flatmate sprawled on his bed.

"Lying, John, obviously," Sherlock drawled in blatant irritation.

"Why are you doing that in _my _bed and not _yours_?"

"Because I wanted to do it here, clearly."

'_Breathe_,' John thought as he walked closer to his bed. "Could you go lie somewhere else now? I would like to use my bed."

"Couldn't possibly." Another breath.

"Why?"

"I have immobilized my left leg with acupuncture needles and I need to remain absolutely still or the data will be skewed."

"What data? What could you possibly need—? You know what, never mind. I don't care. I'll be in the sitting room when you're through monopolizing my space," John expelled before turning and fleeing from the room.

People assumed that John had the patience of a saint for dealing with Sherlock at all, let alone living with the man and not killing him. They were terribly wrong. John had not patience for Sherlock, none at all. Usually, John could ignore peoples' irritating behaviour and actions, even to the extreme. The army had provided a cultivation of that aspect of John's character after the seed had been forcibly planted by John so that he would not murder Harry in their childhood. But Sherlock drove him absolutely mental and John could not pinpoint why. Sherlock, and the things the man said and did, got to John, under his skin, in a way that was _very _unfamiliar to the old army doctor. John was not sure why he put up with it. He knew that many expected him to get fed up and leave one day soon. John's life would be easier without the stress of Sherlock and all of his shenanigans. He should just give up all the silly hopes he had for the other man but he _couldn't_,and it was not because he got to flounce about London examining bloodied, mangled bodies at Sherlock's side every day; it was because he _needed _to be at Sherlock's side every day. John's self-diagnosis was this: 'I am one masochistic job of it.'

Sherlock limped down the stairs from John's room several hours later. The detective spied John sprawled on the sofa, his face scrunched in discomfort and his neck crooked at an odd angle as he slept with it propped against his arm. A strange feeling twisted Sherlock's insides as he looked at John. Sherlock saw the slight rise and fall of John chest as he breathed; he saw the flutter of John's pulse at the doctor's throat and wrist. Sherlock smiled as he registered the pink tint to John's face. Sherlock's doctor was alive and well and Sherlock _ached_ with the knowledge of it. Why did this happen? How did John do this to him? Why did it have to be so frequent and…inappropriate? John's breath would huff across Sherlock's face as they rested against an alley wall after chasing down a criminal and Sherlock would know. John's latex clad hand would brush Sherlock's while they were examining a body at a crime scene in the cold, warm and sure, and Sherlock would be reminded. John's laugh would tumble out of him after Lestrade made some insipid joke at the other end of the Met station, Sherlock's ears barely receiving the noise, but Sherlock would still be sure of it.

Sherlock had never _wanted _anyone alive before. Now, it was important, very important, that John remain that way. It was maddening. Sherlock did not want to be tied down with _feelings _of all things. They were disorderly and _unpredictable_. Sherlock Holmes did not know what he was going to do because, against the odds, he _needed _John Watson.


	8. Part Eight (FitB)

"I can't always be trusted, John." John looked up from the tea and laptop he had carefully balanced on the arm of his chair and regarded Sherlock.

"Why is that, Sherlock?" he asked.

"I lie."

"Right…?" John replied, wondering what Sherlock was getting at. "Everyone does, Sherlock."

"Not you, John. I have never seen or heard you lie unless morally bound to do so for the protection of yourself and, most usually, others." John flushed. What was he supposed to say to that? Fortunately, he was saved from thinking of a response because Sherlock continued to speak.

"I lie all the time and no one catches me, not surprising at all, of course, but you—you are…strangely honest, practically constantly so." Sherlock mentally went through a list of things he could have said after that, like:

_Why is it that, despite your unfailing honesty, you are so well liked, while I am so clearly disliked? _

_I like that I am probably the only one that knows that your toes curl when you do lie. _

_Is it hard being the ideal man for almost any woman emotionally and morally, yet having no woman want you for an extended period of time? Is that because of me? I…I am sorry. Please don't leave me. Many would deem it some sort of poetic justice after what I did to you but I want you here, more than anything. More than nicotine in my system, more than all of my experiments, more than working cases for Lestrade… More than I want a good measure of heroin; but I've already tried that with you and you're still here. Why am I so set on pushing you away? Oh, yes, I know why. You stir things in me, John. You stir things I thought I had long since repressed into oblivion. What am I supposed to do with that?_

As well as many more option in the time it took John to look away from him, blink, scratch his left hand with his right, and gaze back at him again. Sherlock settled, in the end, on saying, "It's a statistical phenomenon. Do you want more tea?" But he tried to make himself believe that he had actually said, "You're a statistical phenomenon. My brain is releasing chemicals into my system that tell me I love you," instead. He couldn't quite manage it.


	9. Part Nine (FitB)

_Click _John hates dancing. _Click_ He is terrible at leading. _Click_ His partners are often taller than him outright or give that illusion when they wear heeled shoes, like most females would, to any occasion at which there will be formal dancing. _Click_ John especially hates weddings. _Click_ Often, there is partner dancing and, usually, this partner dancing is to some sort of classical music. _Click_ John, as the male of the pair, is expected to lead the dance. _Click_ This is why, the night before John's old army friend Martin Sanders' very large wedding, that John is expected to attend in uniform, John is whispering 1-2-3s under his breath as he stumbles over his own two feet in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street to a scratchy tape of overly popular wedding ballads that he has borrowed from Mrs Hudson.

Or, at least, that was what Sherlock deduced as he graced into the flat after an exceptionally boring day going over the paperwork of the latest set of serial murders he had solved for the Met with Anderson of all people. The office workers of NSY should know better than to assign Sherlock the most idiotic, hot-tempered, loudmouthed detective they have to _help _him case notes. A hindrance was what Anderson was. Sherlock had wished John had been there. Why, he was not sure. And what a silly thing that was. Sherlock was an adult and he could handle himself without John so why was it that ever time John was away working at the clinic or getting shopping Sherlock felt less focused, less in control of his thoughts?

But back to dancing. John had had the wedding invitation pinned to the refrigerator since he had received it two months and four days prior. Sherlock was not sure why John was bothering to practice at all, however, if he was going to practice alone because he wasn't going to learn anything by tripping over himself. Sherlock hung up his coat and scarf and stood watching John a few moments more to finish observing the other man's faults as a dancer.

"John." John stopped dead and turned to Sherlock. 'His heart and breathing rates are obviously elevated.' _Click _'I startled him.

'His face is currently flushing and his mouth has drawn taught.' _Click _'He's embarrassed at being caught out.'

"Would you like some assistance in your practice?" Sherlock asked softly as a particularly scratchy piece of the tape played.

"What was that?"

John knew Sherlock detested repeating himself. Sherlock scowled and reiterated his original offer.

"Wha—I… Sure, yes, thank you…? I would love the help." John knew better than to ask any of the questions running though his head at the moment. _You can dance? When did you learn? Does this me you are going to stand near me? Do I have to play the girl? Why are you offering to help me?_

That last question, however, Sherlock must have read on his face because he said, "It is to my benefit that you have a grasp on these skills." John could not imagine how that was but he stepped forward when Sherlock beckoned him anyway.

Sherlock was just reaching out to take John proffered hand when he stopped moving all together, exclaimed, "Just a tick, John," and dashed off to his room. John's heart fell faster than his hand. Of course Sherlock had thought of something more interesting to do than to have John smothered against him while swaying to classical music. But then Sherlock reappeared clutching something small, rectangular and black loosely in his left hand. Sherlock bent smoothly over the tape player John had dug out of the back of his closet and proceeded to switch the tape inside for the one he had been holding. All the while, John had been admiring the curve of the other man's spine through his silky, dark blue button up.

When Sherlock stood, John forced his eyes to blink and his mouth to shut, hoping Sherlock did not notice that he had been ogling. John heard the soft click of the play button being pushed and then Sherlock was on him, placing John's left hand at his waist and scooping up his right. Sherlock nudged John's feet with his own until they too were positioned properly and then the music started. It was the softest violin draw at first, which became bolder and bolder, flowing into a beautiful, rhythmic stream. Sherlock began to sway gently in time with the music. John was too mesmerized by Sherlock's waist slipping about underneath Sherlock's shirt and John's hand to actually move. Sherlock made an impatient noise and John realised he was supposed to be leading. Sherlock's hand felt heavy on his shoulder as John brought his right foot up and forward, Sherlock's left slipping seamlessly back to make room for it. The same procedure was followed by John's left foot and Sherlock's right. John moved his left foot to his left and Sherlock mirrored him. John's left foot glided back and Sherlock's right followed it, just grazing the carpet below. John did the same with his other foot and Sherlock, again, slipped elegantly forward. John then lifted his right foot, to start the process again, but Sherlock halted him with words so close to John's ear that John thought he might just combust as a result of the little puff of warm breath he felt on his neck and cheek.

"Allow me?" It was a request, not an order, John realised as Sherlock waited for his response. Who was this man and what had he done with the Sherlock John had known for the last year and a half?

"Yes, of course," John answered, a little too breathlessly for his own comfort. He soon forgot that discomfort, however, because, as Sherlock led, John was able to just _feel _what was happening.

Sherlock started by moving the pair of them in, what John felt to be, a very easy square pattern, seeming to know exactly when John's feet had moved so that he could progress his own and waiting patiently for John to move when it was necessary; using his body language to cue John in. Before John knew it, they were chasséeing and spinning all over the sitting room, and then, with a final, shrill note, the violin piece ended and John was wrenched back into reality.

Sherlock was just being nice, only the man himself knew why. He didn't feel anything for John beyond friendship and, John knew, not even that often times. John was a tool to be used by Sherlock, just like everyone else. Lestrade provided cases; Molly provided access to St. Bart's; Mrs Hudson provided cheap rent; Mycroft provided help, both when it was needed and when it wasn't; and John…John didn't know what he provided but Sherlock had said it himself not ten minutes passed, "_It is to my benefit that you have a grasp on these skills_." John knew that as soon as he stopped being useful to Sherlock he would be discarded, like a child's least favourite toy from an over full toy box, and that would _crush _him. Abruptly, John later acknowledged to himself, he jerked himself away from Sherlock and all but bolted up the stairs to his room.

John did not see the shocked looked that flashed on Sherlock's features before dissolving into bitter disappointment.


	10. Part Ten (FitB)

In all of Sherlock's previous understanding, when he deleted something from his brain it was exactly that, deleted. Deleted as in gone forever, never to be called up again unless relearned or re-experienced. So, why was he having these odd, disconnected memories of a night with John that could not have happened? John did not want that with him. John had never wanted that with him. He was Sherlock Holmes, and he didn't want that with anyone, least of all John Watson, right? It didn't matter now anyway because he wasn't likely to get out of this alive; and what a failure his death would be. His final and most colossal disappointment: leaving this world unsafe for John, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade. And, even if he did survive, John would probably kill him when he came back… Or, worse, be so angry that he would go and leave Sherlock alone forever. After all, that's what John thought he himself was. Alone.

He couldn't afford to think about John right now. He had an underground criminal organization to break into. Sherlock wondered how many people he would be killing tonight. He always got _sentimental_ when using John's gun. At least Mycroft could always tell quite easily that it had been Sherlock when he sent out the cleanup crew. That gun's weight was reassuring as Sherlock groped inside his coat pocket searching for its cool grip. He couldn't help but think that John's warm fingers would have been more of a comfort in that moment.

And then men were emerging from the west broad door of the abandoned fish factory. Sherlock flew towards them, silent like a bat out of night, his coat billowing out behind him. Within a minute they were all incapacitated and piled up out of sight to wait for "Mycroft's Police," as Sherlock had dubbed them in his head.

Later that night, after he'd paid a visit to the chief of this group's very nice penthouse flat in the middle of Tokyo, Sherlock tallied off cell number thirty-two. 'Only fifty-seven more to go before I can go home.' Unfortunately, the cells were getting more difficult to penetrate with each one he took down. These were not the playhouses of the ridiculously unorganized criminal gangs of London; these were the headquarters of the criminal elite. Moriarty had groomed the heads of these groups by hand to do his dirty work. These were brains he was taking out, not fingers and toes, and with each brain he disposed of the next brain he had to infiltrate was that much more difficult to enter. Sherlock was beginning to suspect that one of these times they would be expecting him, and not with open arms.


	11. Part 11 (FitB)

**Author's Note**: A bit of John being glum and monologging here. Just an FYI.

* * *

"You know, it's been just over six years since you died, Sherlock. It's at times like these that I have to wonder if I am actually going mad because I think things like, 'I should have fought Lestrade and Molly more when they told me I couldn't keep anything from your body.' 'Evidence,' they'd said. They even kept my Browning, although I bet that has more with them not wanting _me _to have it. Why did you have that with you, anyway?

I wonder if Mycroft actually had you buried in that shirt I requested. I know it was your favourite, even if you wouldn't admit it when I asked you. I gave it to him when he came to the flat to 'personally invite' me to your funeral. As if I wouldn't have come had he not mentioned it? I think he feels guilty—a surprisingly human emotion for Mycroft but, then again, I did happen to fall in love with his self-proclaimed sociopathic younger brother and realised too damn late to do anything about it, so anything's possible. I wonder if he has surveillance equipment here… Who am I kidding? Of course he has. Hello, Mycroft.

They—my therapist, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson—keep telling me that I need to move on from you. They say it isn't healthy to stay stuck. The thing is, I don't want to move on. You were the most important thing to ever occur in my life. My best years were the ones I shared with you. I mean, sure, my blood pressure probably suffered and I still think that whole week of food poisoning I had was caused by those eggs you _said _were fine; I may have been shot at, and threatened at gun point, more times than my mother would have liked, but you know that I loved every second of it.

I just don't want to accept that you are actually gone because I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I have work, and I have poker on Wednesday nights with Greg and the other Yarders. I even went on a date with Molly a few years ago but it was beyond awkward. I think we were both trying too hard. I see Mike, you remember him, for lunch sometimes. And, of course, there's Mrs Hudson. Your brother stops by on occasion too. He, interestingly enough, never tells me I need to move on. Did I tell you he invited me to Christmas at the Holmes's the year you died!?" John asked laughingly. "He must have seen on my face how amusing that suggestion had been at the time—not at all." John sighed.

"I'm just not sure how to move on when I don't actually want to… When I don't actually see a need to…

"Why should I? I'm doing just fine while thinking about you every second of every day. Clearly the every second of every day bit of that is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

"Maybe they're right. Maybe it is silly of me to not try seeking out real companionship again. I just don't know, Sherlock." John rested his cheek against the cool edge of the headstone he was leaning against. The damp grass was making his jeans and pants wet. He couldn't bring himself to care. John looked down his nose and watched as his breath fogged around the letter 'S,' tapering before also enveloping 'H.'

"I miss you, you arse."


	12. Part 12 (FitB)

"Tisk, tisk, Sherlock. What have you gotten yourself into?" Sherlock shuttered as a cough rattled his aching chest. He tried to sit up, stopped by a firm hand on his right shoulder.

"Now, I might think that the pain rising would cause you is just punishment for being so sloppy as to get yourself shot—twice—in the abdomen but I am your brother and I do care more for your wellbeing than for my personal judicial scalings of you, so _stay down_." Sherlock groaned as the memories of what must have been days before began to file themselves away in his mind.

"You're lucky, you know. Those thugs left you for dead. If they had been more careful and checked you over you probably wouldn't be here right now. The kids that found you, just outside of Edinburgh, if you recall, had quite a fright at the look of you. The doctors could not determine at exactly what point in the process of bleeding out you turned onto your back and began shoving your shirt into your bullet wounds but they're calling that a stroke of genius. Apparently, had you not done that, you would have expired in that scrap yard hours before that group of hooligans stumbled upon your unconscious, blood soaked body."

"Mycroft—"

"Yes, dear brother?"

"Mycroft, shut up," Sherlock intoned weakly.

"As you wish, Sherlock, but listen to me first. You are extremely unlikely to get so lucky again. I know you love him but the kind of reckless behaviour you indulged in has consequences. The next time, one of those consequences may very well be your death. Don't let there be a next time, Sherlock." As his brother stood to leave Sherlock's pale hand shot out for him, barely catching Mycroft's sleeve between his thumb and forefinger.

"Is he dead, Mycroft?"

"Sherlock, I do not think that you are in any kind of condition to—"

"Did you see his lifeless body yourself, Mycroft?" Sherlock breathed harshly. The older Holmes brother sighed.

"Yes and quite a number you did on him, too. I doubt Mr. Moran's own mother would have been able to recognise him, let alone a bunch of hired men." With that Mycroft departed, sealing the hospital door softly behind him. Sherlock's eyes began to burn. He felt hot tears slip down the sides of his head to settle along the underside of his jaw and on his earlobes, leaving cool, itchy trails in their wakes. That was it. He was done. He could go home—just as soon as the bullet holes in his body had healed enough. There was no reason to scare John with those after everything else.

The emotional onslaught Sherlock felt in response to thinking of John was not uncommon to him at this point but the crying was new. He wondered, now that he allowed himself to, how John would react when he returned to 221B. Mycroft's reports on John had been sparse although Sherlock knew his brother was following John's every move. It was better if he didn't tell Sherlock. Sherlock couldn't deduce many things about John if the relevant facts were withheld but he had always been a very accurate guesser when it came down to it. In any case, he would know firsthand just how John was very soon. Sherlock let that happy thought lull him into heavy sleep.


	13. Part 13 (FitB)

**Author's Note**: A little bit of graphic description of a crime scene here.

* * *

"Faggots!" A tall man barked as he shoved passed John and Sherlock on the busy high street.

"Just keep walking, John. He's not worth it. His wife is cheating on him. He suspects but doesn't know for certain. He's doing the best he can and has been faithful but she's not satisfied. Most likely this is because she wanted kids and he didn't. They don't have any. On top of that, his business is under financial duress so, unless a miracle occurs, he will be filing for bankruptcy tomorrow morning. He is angry in his life, John, and he's taking it out on us.

"Don't you dare drop my hand," Sherlock added with a glare out of the corner of his eye.

It always surprised John how possessive (if he was more naïve he may have used the word affectionate) Sherlock was over him in public. He was by no means overly possessive but the fact that he was physically responsive at all in front of people was intriguing. John would be lying if he said he didn't like it. The Yarders, of course, had a good laugh each time Sherlock introduced some new dynamic to his public displays. Or, they'd had some good laughs since the displays got obvious enough to be noticed. At first, Sherlock just stood a bit closer to John when they were out and about. Then, he started to touch John's elbow or shoulder they passed by one another. John didn't think much of it initially but, in hindsight, he realised that the behaviour Sherlock was exhibiting was actually quite normal. Sherlock: normal, now that was funny.

Then came The Day. They had had to walk—well, hike, really—up a steep stone laden path to a crime scene. The "trail" came to an abrupt stop about 100 meters before the police tape. The virtual climb to the scene, some sort of moonlight sacrifice, apparently, became steeper still so that the various personnel occasionally had to use handholds and the assistance of one another to scale up the slope. Donovan had already had to turn back in search of more practical footwear. This terrain was not trouble for John, however, for, after fighting in the sands of the Middle East, very little in the way of geography presented a problem to a good soldier. Nor did it raise any obstacle to Sherlock with his long limbs, sure feet and impeccable balance.

"Good God, this is ridiculous!" John heard Anderson exclaim from somewhere behind him. John smiled to himself and, as he rounded a bush, he caught Sherlock watching him from over his ever-coat-clad shoulder. They shared a quick grin.

Sherlock soon disappeared behind a coarse tree line that John followed him into. The trees thinned to reveal a vertical stretch of earth. In a cut out in the face stood Lestrade and a young officer who was so white in the face that John was sure he'd keel over at any moment. John spied what he guessed to be some sort of altar made of compiled stones. The body of a nude, dark skinned woman was draped on her front over it, her dark hair obscuring her face from view.

Sherlock reached the overlook first. He hooked his hands in the roots of a plant growing on the ledge of the pocket and tested his weight on it, quickly hauling himself up and onto the ledge. Dusting his hands on his trousers he immediately settled into what John called his "deduction stance" to begin observations.

By the that time, John had reached the base of the earth face himself and was trying to figure out how in the world he was going to get up to the crime scene because the plant Sherlock, and, presumably, Lestrade and the other officer, had used was well out of his grasp and there were no other handholds to be seen any lower than the ledge itself. Just as John was resigning himself to calling for a hand up Sherlock's appeared above him. Sherlock's wrist was twisted to allow John's right hand to seize his left. John latched both of his hands onto Sherlock's and Sherlock pulled John up to the ledge while John walked up the face by bracing his feet against it. When John was standing upright in the pocket he made to release Sherlock's hand from his, there was just one problem; Sherlock's left hand would not let go of John's right.

"Sherlock," John began before Sherlock yanked him forward toward the body.

"Tell me what you already know, just from looking, John," Sherlock insisted. He still hadn't dropped John's hand. Behind them, Lestrade sent a stern look at the young officer next to him who had now become quite red in the face as a result of refraining from laughing aloud.

"Well...," John said, tightening his hand around Sherlock's. "She must have been conscious and able bodied when she and the killer came up here," John replied while gesturing around them with his free hand. "She's completely nude but her feet are undamaged suggesting that the killed took her clothes and shoes. She has several scrapes on her arms and, when we turn her over, I bet we will find more scrapes along the length of her body. She appears to have been struggling against something that was holding her down on the stones. Oh, dear me, there are pre-mortem sustained and post-mortem developing—I'd wager—bruises forming on her lower back and thighs. Do you reckon the killed knelt on her to keep her down?" Sherlock nodded. "Their mistake," John said, drawing a grin from his fickle flatmate.

"Additionally, there are no obvious footprints in the soft earth—" John said while gesturing towards their feet. "—other than those of the people present so I'd say the killer swept their prints. Do you have a cause of death yet, Lestrade?"

"No. We can't begin to determine that until we turn her over and we've got to wait for Anderson to do his thing before we can do that."

"Good job I'm here to 'do my thing,' then," came Anderson's disembodied voice from the ground below.

Lestrade directed the young officer to assist Anderson with his cases of equipment while the man hauled himself up with the aid of the same traumatised plant the other men, hold John, had used.

"I have no idea where that fat copper stereotype comes from after criminals themselves ensure that we are getting...so much—" Anderson broke off from his rant and burst out laughing. After that, no scathing look from Lestrade was going to keep the other officer from joining him.

"Sherlock,—" John hissed as he attempted to pull his hand away from his, as it turned out, clingy boyfriend. "Sherlock, let go!" At this point it was taking all of John's will power not to obviously wrench his hand out of Sherlock's iron grip. He settled on pulling Sherlock to the side so that they could _discuss _it.

"If you pull away now you will never hear the end of this. They will continue to tease you because you will have made your embarrassment over our relationship very clear to them." At that John stopped struggling.

"I am not embarrassed of us, Sherlock," John said adamantly.

"The evidence tells a different story. Every single time anyone used to insinuate that we were a couple before... Moriarty you insisted that we were not together and that you were most definitely not gay. People were then encouraged to think of us as a couple because of your constant denial. As the idea festered, you began to cave and let people think what they would but it took a lot on their part to break you. After I came back and we did start _seeing_ one another you were not so subtly suggestive towards the idea that the people in our lives, other than Mrs Hudson and, of course, Mycroft, as it could not be kept from him, should not know about us. I was...disappointed that you didn't want to be seen with me this way so I—"

Sherlock was silenced as John launched himself at the taller man, hooking his left arm around Sherlock's neck and pulling him down for a kiss. John's lips parted slightly as he met Sherlock's so that he could gently suckle at the consulting detective's lower lip. Sherlock, never one to show submission in public no matter how demonstrative he was willing to be in front of others, quickly took over the kiss, releasing John's hand from his and wrapping his arms around the smaller man. He pressed one hand to John's lower back and splayed the other between John's shoulder blades. Sherlock began to lap at John's mouth until the doctor relented in his hope that he could keep this somewhat work appropriate and opened his lips to Sherlock's eager tongue.

John fisted his hands in the waist of Sherlock's open coat and prayed that he wouldn't walk away from this with an erection as they were at a _crime scene _in the middle of _nowhere _at least an _hour's train ride _away from London.

As he always did, John let Sherlock take from him... And take and take and take. John gave when he could; fluttering his tongue along the edge of Sherlock's when it slowed in its claiming. It had only taken Sherlock one and a half snogging sessions—with only the first half of the first one being too slobbery and rough—to know exactly where John's mouth was most sensitive and which movements of his tongue against John's would elicit the most reaction from the doctor.

John knew he had to pull away or he'd be regretting it later. He inched his head backwards and Sherlock followed. Drastic measures, then. John held Sherlock still with his hands at the taller man's waist and dragged himself away. He opened his eyes and looked up at Sherlock's face. John saw a split second of Sherlock looking adorably dazed. He wished, then, that he got to see Sherlock like that more often: his pale cheeks flushed, that cupid's bow of his red and swollen to distortion. Removing his hands from Sherlock's waist, John cupped the consulting detective's face in his hands and kissed him; taking care not to encourage it—nor to allow Sherlock to encourage it—into anything more than tender. He pulled away again after a moment and whispered, "I am not nor will I ever be embarrassed of you. This is new for me still, that's all. Next time just use your words, you idiotic genius."

As they walked back over to the crime scene hand-in-hand both blissfully ignored the slack jawed stares of the three Yarders.

"Anderson, I suggest you delete the pictures you took of that exchange from your phone," Sherlock said as he stopped next to the forensic technician, John blushing at his side.

"No way, Freak. Sally would never forgive me if I didn't send her these. She'll probably have a calendar made. Or t-shirts."

"Just leave it, Sherlock. Let them have their fun," John pleaded as Sherlock's hand flexed dangerously in his.

Later that day, the data on every mobile phone at NSY was mysteriously erased. One Sally Donovan could be seen through the windows of an upper floor screaming in rage and repeatedly kicking a paper waste basket.


	14. Part 14 (FitB)

'_Queen_,' was the first thought through John's head as he was roused to wakefulness. 'Sherlock listens to Queen, of all things.'

Sherlock had said there would be quite times. Sherlock had said there would be days in which he didn't even rise from the sofa, let alone mutter a word to his flatmate. Sherlock had said there would be instances when he would leave the flat and not return for several days. John was beginning to wonder if he should put in a request; if he could ask for one of those promised days of silence.

So far, in the last six months he had been living with Sherlock, John had had, maybe, four nights of uninterrupted rest. Sometime it was nightmares, most of the time it was Sherlock. When it was Sherlock, sometimes it was the violin, most of the time it was some kind of minor explosion. Other times it was the creak of the floorboards outside of his room on the landing. Other times still it was something new, like Queen.

As John became fully awake he was able to make out the song that Sherlock was playing, and couldn't he be doing so at a lower volume? John spared a moment's thought to poor Mrs Hudson downstairs as he stood into his slippers and made his was out of his room.

The cooler air outside caused gooseflesh to alight upon John's bare upper half and arms. He ignored his discomfort in favour of teasing his flatmate. Who knew being rudely awakened so early made him playful? Sherlock probably did, come to think of it.

"Sherlock, surely you 'want to break free' at a decent hour of the day just as much as you do at two in the morning?" John all but shouted at the man that appeared to be dozing on the sofa through the racket. He wasn't, John knew better than to assume that anymore. He couldn't be, not with all the noise.

"I am beginning to wonder if Mrs Hudson is appalled by the rawness of the deal she got herself into when she let you sign the lease." Sherlock cracked his left eye open and watched John's back recede into the kitchen.

John returned several minutes later to the then quiet sitting room bearing a cup of tea for each of them. Apparently Sherlock had only wanted to hear the one song. He was now sitting up and typing feverishly on his laptop. John set Sherlock's mug on the coffee table in front of the man and took his post in his arm chair, as usual.

"I thought that, because of your penchant to playing Bach, Mozart and the like, you'd be more of a classical music man.

You know, most would certainly consider the fact that I find your listening to Queen to be odd quite odd in and of itself." John smiled to himself as he took a sip of his tea. That was just the word of his life these days, odd.

He glanced down at the mug of tea, as yet untouched by Sherlock, gently steaming on the coffee table. John thought he had likely picked up and dumped out more of Sherlock's cold, untouched cups of tea than Sherlock had actually consumed in the course of their time together. He would just stop making a cuppa for Sherlock all together unless the man asked but the last time he had left the consulting detective without a mug of hot tea near him when John had made himself one Sherlock had looked upon him with such a calculating expression, as if John had been an algebraic equation Sherlock was proofing, that John had almost thought Sherlock was trying to convey hurt. As if Sherlock's feelings _could_ be hurt.

By John.

Over a cuppa.

Sherlock's _feelings_.

John hadn't missed Sherlock in his tea routine since.


	15. Part 15 (FitB)

"Only one hit per post, that's ridiculous!"

"Not again, Sherlock. We have been over this. Your brand of intellectual stimuli is not something that many people find particularly appealing."

"No, apparently not. According to my website statistics page, only one person with access to the Internet and a properly working electronic device capable of connecting to said Internet is interested in knowing at what speed various types of animal blood congeal in generic, Tesco brand coffee grounds when in a neutral environment. That is useful information, John; why does only one person, other than me, want to know it?"

"Maybe that one person, God forbid, is like you. Maybe that one person likes the science, the experimentation, as much as you do. Maybe that one person does similar things in their life. Maybe not," John replied, although he was sure the question had mostly been meant hypothetically.

"Don't be daft. You always want to believe the best in people. They are not what you think of them and you are wasting your time on them. I'm sure it's just one of the people in my brother's fleet of assistants making sure I don't post anything nearing the line of 'a risk to my safety.' John? Where are you going? We were talking!"

"I'm off to get the shopping. Don't blow anything up while I'm gone and tell me before hand the next time you plan on using all of the coffee grounds," John said as he pulled on his jacket. "And you should know that you really are an idiot that misses some of the most obvious things on occasion, I just don't usually hold it against you." With that, John left the flat. He had only gone down a few steps to the front door before he turned around and made his way back to the door of 221B. He opened it saying, "And I expect _you_ to replace the good gauze in my med kit."

He was glad for the fresh air when he exited again and got out of the flat. Sherlock's blindness to the people around him really was infuriating sometimes.

Sherlock set aside the computer he had been working on and padded barefoot into the kitchen, not bothering to notice that John had cleaned up the broken beaker Sherlock had dropped to the floor that morning. He squatted down by the sink and opened the cupboard below and to the right of it. The bag was still there, just as he had left it. The smear of sodium powder his thumb had left on the steel zipper tab was still there as well, nestled nicely as the tab was upon the closed zipper. It was as if that smear was mocking him now instead of cuing him in. He shut the cupboard door and stood, steepling his fingers under his chin as he paced. It only took him two steps to realise what John had been all but telling him before.

John was Sherlock's website's single hit.

Sherlock hadn't wanted to search out a shop that sold the correct kind of army quality gauze. It was on the other side of the city, if Sherlock was unlucky. He could have searched it out rather easily online but he had needed to touch it, make sure it was the right kind. John would know now. John knew that kit like nothing else.

The only way John could have known that Sherlock had used all of the "good" nylon and cotton blended gauze in the doctor's kit without having looked in the kit itself was if he had either seen Sherlock using it—which he hadn't because Sherlock had been careful to keep that experiment confined to his room; he hadn't wanted John to see him pricking his own arm to draw blood. He had deduced that John would get the wrong idea if he saw that—or if he had seen the break down and conclusion of the experiment on Sherlock's website.

It took many, many more steps for Sherlock to figure out why his dismissive behaviour over John's subtle admission had upset the doctor. This was shaping up to be a spectacularly boring day. Sherlock thought he might have to resort to _people watching_ to placate himself.

John returned to the flat a couple of hours later to find a scrap of paper puttied to icebox door with jam. 'He must not have wanted to search for the tape. I'll have to pick up some magnets.'

"Gone to West Ham Park area in search of gauze. Will not be going different day if Lestrade calls."

If the grin John was sporting while he put the shopping away that afternoon was unusually large, he was too happy to take note of it.


	16. Part 16 (FitB)

Sherlock was _sick _of beans. He barely ate anything while he was out here but why did it always have to be beans? Surely Mycroft's team knew that cold canned soup was just as edible, if somewhat less appealing, as warm canned soup. Did they, for some reason, think that he was adverse to canned fruit? The least they could do was send him some crackers. This meagre diet of bottled water and beans they were keeping him supplied with was ensuring that the bit of a tummy John had somehow charmed onto Sherlock was fast diminishing.

He missed the smell of Chinese takeaway. He missed the slightly sticky tabletops and that stupid, ever-present candle at Angelo's. He missed John all but spoon feeding him. He missed knowing that there would be a hot cuppa at his elbow at least three times a day, whether he drank it or not.

At least he had his nicotine patches.


	17. Part 17 (FitB)

"What are you talking about, Sherlock? Last Saturday night was our first _together_," John said, forming air quotes as he said the word "together."

"It can't have been. I have memories, John. They are scant and disjointed but they are there. It has to just be a glitch. I must have not been in the right mindset when I erased it. That's the only way that makes sense."

"...Not the only way," John said as he reached for Sherlock's hand and pulled the taller man down from his halted pacing stance above John, who was seated in his armchair, newspaper forgotten in his lap.

"Stop talking about your brain like it's a computer, you stupid man," John mumbled as he kissed Sherlock's pale forehead. John released Sherlock's hand and Sherlock straightened, looking down on John with a puzzled expression.

"It is a computer, John," Sherlock said. "It is a rapidly working, organic, oxygen fuelled computer."

"No, it's not. It is your brain. Your brain that follows its own course, on occasion, while you're asleep." John sat quietly for a few seconds as what he had said was being processed and waited for the light to flicker to life in Sherlock's dark eyes. It happened quickly and, when it did, Sherlock turned and sat heavily on the arm of John's chair.

"I had never dreamt before, that I remember."

"I gathered."


	18. Part 18 (FitB)

"Oh, just look at you. What were you feeding yourself while you were away?" Mrs Hudson tutted as she fussed with Sherlock's favourite shirt's collar—again. "John had you nice and filled out before you died too.

"I'm going to get some of those iced biscuits I made this morning for you and John to have at tea later. That'll be a nice treat, won't it, Sherlock?" his landlady and most certainly not housekeeper asked as her kitten heel clad feet made their way out of the sitting room of her flat.

She had cried earlier, when he had come to the door. She had said that someone dressing as him and coming to her home was a cruel joke to play on a nice old lady such as herself. Sherlock had agreed and said that it was a good thing, then, that he didn't play jokes on nice old ladies. She had said "No, of course not, dear. What was my bastard husband's middle name?" Without hesitation, Sherlock had responded with,

"He had two, the first was Eugene and the second Emmers," at which point she had thrown herself into his arms.

Sherlock had been happy to see her, to smell her, to touch her again. Hers was the first non-violent human contact he'd had that hadn't pertained to his hospital stay since Mycroft had awkwardly patted his knee a bit during the car ride there. Seeing her, being there, though, only made him miss John that much more.

"He'll be home soon, dear." Sherlock jumped at the sound of Mrs Hudson voice.

"And that must be the first time you've ever been startled by anyone in your life. My, he has got you well and hooked, hasn't he? You're going to need tell him just how well at some point, you know."

Sherlock could only nod.


	19. Part 19 (FitB)

_Bang!... Crash!... Clang!... Smash!_

Mrs Hudson ran up the stairs as fast as she could manage and didn't bother knocking before throwing open the door of flat 221B. As she surveyed the chaos within, a few choice words, that she might not otherwise have used, jumped to mind, and from mind to tongue.

"Sherlock, just what the _hell _do you think you're doing?" Sherlock's head snapped around and he glared at his landlady.

"What does it look like, Mrs Hudson?" he bellowed at her. "I think I am wrecking the fucking flat." Mrs Hudson stared at him. In truth, Sherlock looked a fright. His hair was unwashed and standing in a frizzy halo about his head; his eyes were red rimmed and sunken. He looked as though he hadn't changed out of the clothes he was wearing, his thin blue dressing gown and a pair of too-short cotton sleep pants, for at least the last several days and, as he lifted his arm to chuck _The Modern Encyclopaedia of Poisonous Flora and Where to Find It_,she saw that, under the sleeve of his dressing gown, Sherlock's right arm was lined with the debris covered residue of tens of nicotine patches.

"Sherlock, dear, put that book down this instant." As Sherlock did not respond to her immediately but stared blindly ahead, the heavy volume held aloft, Mrs Hudson dared to take a small step forward. The book fell from Sherlock's hand and Sherlock dropped with it, cascading to the floor in ripples of slightly iridescent blue cloth.

Mrs Hudson took a few more tentative steps forward and laid a gentle hand on Sherlock's shoulder. "What is it, dear?"

"Don't think lesser of me for this outburst, Mrs Hudson. Many shall follow it if things continue on the path they are on," Sherlock mumbled from between his knees, tucked up in himself as he was.

"Just tell me what's bothering you. I can try to help."

"I doubt you can keep John from hating me."

"Hating you? Sherlock, that young man is positively enamoured with you."

"As everyone but he himself seems to know. I can see it, Mycroft can see it, you can see it, Lestrade can see it, for Christ sake, even John insipid, simpering little _girlfriends_ can see it."

"If you want him to know, Sherlock, you are going to have to tell him how you feel about him first."

"And how exactly is it that I feel about him, Mrs Hudson?" Sherlock asked as he peeked up at his landlady, the heat in his voice betrayed by the absolutely helpless look on his face. "How am I supposed to tell him what it is I am _feeling _when even I, the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, don't know?"

"But that's just it. Tell him _that_, Sherlock. John is bright, brighter than you give him credit for, I know he'll understand you; and when you've said your piece I know he'll finally be able to admit to himself what he feels for you," Mrs Hudson said softly. Sherlock rested his forehead on his drawn up knees and sighed.

"I don't want him to realise it," Sherlock muttered. "It's better if he doesn't know. If he is oblivious to it all then our relationship remains uncomplicated. I don't have to risk losing him... Not again." And just like that the nostril burning stench of chlorine burdened air returned to him and he was mentally pulled back into that damp pool room, surrounded by snipers, Jim Moriarty chortling like a gleeful chimp in front of him and John standing off to his left, zipped into a Parka laden with explosives; the both of them speckled with the red laser dots of ten individual gunmen.

"He could have died, Mrs Hudson. He could have been brutally murdered right in front of _me_ for a motive based solely on his association with _me_."

"Oh, Sherlock, he's never going to leave you, you know. No amount of pushing you could ever do would making him walk out that door for good, never to return. He may kip on a lady friend's sofa on occasion but that just means that he knows his limits around you. He knows when he's getting too frustrated with _you_ and he cares enough for _you_ not to let that anger out on _you_. Tell him when you're ready. He will wait. Now, what say I put the kettle on and you and I get to work straightening this mess out? If John returns to this he might actually see fit to yell at you," Mrs Hudson said in a teasing tone as she smiled softly down at the troubled genius on the floor.

As she started towards the kitchen, she felt Sherlock's hand on the back of her own for just a moment. The consulting detective's hand was retracted as quickly as it had been dispatched as he turned on his heel, dressing gown fluttering around him, and bent to collect several items from the carpet.

"You know, I'm not your housekeeper, dear," Mrs Hudson called over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen.

'No, you're much, much more than that,' Sherlock thought as he arranged a number of John's university medical texts on a lower shelf of the flat's largest bookcase.


	20. Part 20 (FitB)

He couldn't let John say that word. Sherlock wouldn't be able to maintain himself if he heard John speak that dreaded word.

Sherlock clamped a pale hand over John's thin mouth, taking care to keep his fingers closed in order to muffle anything the smaller man dared to utter.

"Shurlick...," John tried to cry in exasperation.

"I can't let you say it, John. Not again. Hearing that word in your voice...it sets my blood ablaze."

"Surlick, moo urn and," John said as he wrapped his own hands around the wrist protruding from his face.

"I can't do that, John." John huffed through his nose in frustration and waited. Sherlock would get tired or this at some point.

Some minutes later, both men gasped quite suddenly for wholly different reasons.

John had snuck out his tongue to wet his lips, as seemed to be his obsession, behind Sherlock's hand. When John's tongue had accidentally grazed a small bit of Sherlock's palm John had gasped as the acrid flavour of a concentrated vinegar solution had filled his mouth; Sherlock had gasped because John's hot, wet tongue had _touched his palm_, and wasn't that just an interesting source of external stimuli?

Sherlock pulled his hand away, immediately regretting his slip up.

John laughed triumphantly and flew from the sofa, knocking his cane to the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, putting the coffee table and two armchairs between himself and his temporarily oppressive silencer.

"Wrong, Sherlock. You were one hundred percent wrong," John chirped with a grin. Perhaps he was chirping because he had finally gotten to taste that damned elusive canary.

"You. Were. Wrong." He hadn't been. He had been one hundred percent correct in his deduction but Mary Morstan had been one good liar. She may have even had John fooled. But she hadn't, Sherlock knew that.

Sherlock fell to his side on the sofa and rolled over, turning his back to John. He did not wish to have this conversation, not now.

"Sherlock, stop that. We are going to discuss this. You can't just roll over and pretend I'll go away."

"Maybe it would be better if you did. Have you ever considered that? I am an adult, John, and I cared for myself, albeit with conceivably less attention than you have given, for fifteen solid years before you came into my life. I took care of myself again, survived, for six years without you. It was horrid and I detested it, but I lived. I don't need you to get by, John, I need you for something else entirely, so, if my exposing your date for what she really was has upset you enough to something about me, something to me, that you don't actually believe, then I think it would be best if you just left me to myself."

Sherlock heard John collapse into his armchair.

"They were right, you'll never go."

"Who was right?"

"Mycroft, Donovan, Mrs Hudson."

"The dense Mrs Anderson picked up on that at some point, did she? She warned me about you, you know. She said I ought to get away while I could. Little did she know, I was already enthralled and I had only just met you."

They sat in silence for long minutes, each assessing what had been said and deciding just how much they wanted to reveal about themselves during this _heart-to-heart_.

"It was the worst time of my life, those first years without you," John said at length. "I don't think I would have ever moved on."

John bent his head, rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his forehead in his upturned hands. This was a pose he had taken to often while Sherlock had been gone. It was almost as if he could block it all out, if he sat there long enough, clearing his mind.

"What is it, Sherlock, that you need me for?" John asked, apprehensive about what Sherlock was going to respond with. Sherlock hesitated slightly, something he was rare in doing, before replying.

"You make me feel, John. I may have smiled at crime scenes before you, out of glee for being given a puzzle to solve," Sherlock murmured into the sofa cushions. "But I had never laughed at any before you. You push me, John, is ways I have never been pushed before. Intellectual stimulation I can find, easily enough, on my own; physical stimulation comes as part of life in this vessel; sexual stimulation is yet to be needed; and emotional stimulation was unnecessary, as I had repressed any emotions my mind chose to muster that were not useful to me, until you showed up and started making me tea." John said nothing for a few moments, gradually taking in the information Sherlock had entrusted him with and, if he was honest with himself, he had known for a long time.

"Right then," came John's reply in a calm, level voice. "I think you should know, although I'm surprised you haven't realised nor has your brother told you, that I am, pretty damn explicably and definitely irreversibly, in love with you." Sherlock's face came into view over his shoulder, the look of shock on his face further confirming what John though he knew.

"I understand if you actually do wish me to leave now. As you said, you can take care of yourself and my feelings will only prove a distraction."

"John, be quiet."

"Buh—uh..., Sherlock,—"

"John, _shut up_. I need to think." John sat quietly, giving in, as he always did.

"What did you mean by 'you're surprised my brother hasn't told me'?" Sherlock asked after a few minutes. "He would have known I could deduce it off of you just as easily as he could. Why would he need to tell me that you love me?"

"I... I, er, may have mentioned it, shortly before you came back, actually, when I visited your grave. It was the first time I had visited without Mrs Hudson so I felt able to speak freely. I assumed your brother had surveillance equipment there. He would have heard me admit it, clear as day, to a you that was never there."

"He really is a bastard!" Sherlock exclaimed.

"What, for having surveillance equipment at your gravesite? I really don't think that's unreasonable, especially knowing h—"

"No, no!" Sherlock barked, sitting up and tucking his legs to himself, hugging them to his chest as he stared intently at John. "He's a right bastard for not telling me that you knew and acknowledged that you are in love with me."

"Now, hold on a minute. I hardly think it would have been his place to tell you that—"

"Oh, don't you get it, John? Everyone already _knew_. You were the only one too blind, or refusing, to realise it. Moriarty even said it, all those years ago in that pool room." John's head snapped up from his hands to watch Sherlock at the mention of Moriarty. "He said, 'I'll burn the _heart _out of you.' He wasn't talking about my physical heart, John. He was talking about my heart as something metaphysical. He was talking about the things in this word that I...care for," Sherlock said, ending in a hush.

John's eyes widened dramatically as he heard that. He closed them quickly and brought his hands up to cover his face, groaning as he did so. John removed his hands from his face and sat up properly a few minutes later looking somewhat more composed.

"Well that's... I just... Yes, I'm thinking tea." The doctor stood and all but fled to the kitchen, seeking refuge, as he often did, among his boxes of blended leaves.

Sherlock stood a moment after John had left, headed for his violin and new music stand. On his way, he stepped nimbly over John's cane and gave it a firm shove under the sofa with his bare right foot.


	21. Part 21 (FitB)

"Christ, I bloody hate you sometimes," John expelled as he threw open the flat door and stomped angrily out onto the landing. He slammed the door behind him and walked down the stairs a few steps before sinking down onto them. He sat, breathing rapidly for a few moments, while trying to calm himself.

Mrs Hudson's door cracked open on the ground level, startling John. He looked up to see her emerging with a cup of tea in each hand and a comforting smile on her face.

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs Hudson," John said apologetically as she walked up the stairs towards him. He stood and took the mug she extended out to him. She settled herself on the step John's feet were resting on and patted the step behind her with her free hand.

"It's no trouble at all, dear," she said before taking a dainty sip of her cuppa.

John sat, carful to keep his mug level, and sighed.

"So, what's he done now?" Mrs Hudson asked kindly.

"Oh, nothing too particular, just been his ignorant, arrogant self."

"You can't expect him to change for you, dear. You'll just end up disappointed."

"I know, and I don't, it's just that, sometimes, the times he knows he's doing it, the times that he's aware that the things he's saying are hurting people, I can't take it... Especially when he does it to me."

"Do you feel you should be exempt from it, John?" Mrs Hudson asked. "Because it seems to me that, in truth, you signed up for an extra ration of it, quite willingly, in reality." They sat quietly after that, simply drinking their tea, although a great deal of thinking was being done on John's part.

After draining the last gulp of tea from his mug, John said, "I guess I just wish he'd apologize afterward, when he saw how much he'd upset me, but he won't. I know apologizing is not part of his character."

"You're wrong in that," Mrs Hudson replied. "He does apologize, he just doesn't do it anywhere near as directly as you or I would." As she finished speaking, Mrs Hudson stood, wincing as her bad hip protested.

"Oh, goodness!" John exclaimed as he rushed to stand and help Mrs Hudson down the stairs. "I should have realised the stairs would be uncomfortable for you."

"Not to worry, dear," she said, patting John's cheek with her free hand before taking back her mug from him. "I'm fairly certain Sherlock heard every word of that conversation and that's for the best, really."


	22. Part 22 (FitB)

Drinkable milk was hard to come by these days in flat 221B Baker Street. Sherlock's insistence that the physiologist was murdered by his dairy farm running father-in-law because of the introduction of a specialized poisonous homogenising agent that the dairy farmer's chemist cousin had developed for him because the physiologist had been sleeping with the chemist cousin's wife was a theory that Lestrade and his higher-ups were having trouble swallowing, especially because the supposedly poisonous homogenising agent didn't seem to be poisonous at all. Sherlock claimed that, if he could find the right concentration of acetic acid to disrupt the homogenisation of the milk, he could extract the poisonous compounds from the milk and prove his theory.

As a result, John was being forced to live milklessly because Sherlock couldn't confine his experiment to just the dairy farmer's milk, no; he had to use _all the milk in the flat_. For a solid three day period John bought a carton of milk in the morning and had to return to Tesco's in the afternoon to purchase another. He had given up after the sixth carton and instead decided to ask Mrs Hudson if he could please borrow splashes of milk from her. The problem with that solution, however, was that five hours before John had come to ask about borrowing milk, the fan in Mrs Hudson refrigerator had burned out and, as it came to be in the end, Mrs Hudson was quite milkless as well because she had asked Sherlock if she might be able to store her non-spoilt food items in his and John's fridge, resulting in the monopolization of her own milk. John and Mrs Hudson were then forced to resign themselves to tea that they felt to be entirely too bitter.

"John, pass me that beaker there," Sherlock said as he bent over a microscope set on the kitchen work surface and gestured to the table, every inch of which was covered in glassware filled to various levels with slowly spoiling organic liquid lactose.

"Which beaker, Sherlock? There is something like twenty of them here."

"Seventeen, John, and the one on the far left closest to the wall containing the milk with the greenish film on its surface," Sherlock replied as he pushed the fingers of his left hand through the hair over his forehead in exasperation, smearing more cream residue on top of the dried smudges already there.

John picked up the beaker matching Sherlock's description and placed it on the counter next to the consulting detective.

"When will you be done with this, do you think? I rather miss having milk to drink."

"You and me both, dear," said Mrs Hudson as she came into the kitchen to get a block of cheddar from the refrigerator.

"I'm quite sick of it, to be honest," Sherlock said as he carefully extracted a sample of the greenish milk film from the beaker John had set near him and placed it between a pair of glass slides.

"Of course you're sick of it, you've practically been living in it for the last four days," John said as he wet a flannel. "Hold still," requested John, pushing his fingers into Sherlock hair to get it out of the way and gently wiping the streaks of cream from Sherlock's forehead while the taller man was still bowed over his microscope. "You need a haircut. You keep brushing your fringe out of your eyes and getting things on your face." Sherlock sucked his lower lip into his mouth and tried not to take note of how good it felt to have John's fingers on his scalp and John's attention all on him.

Drawing in a terse breath, Sherlock said, "...Thank you, John," as the doctor turned away from him to rinse the flannel in the sink.

Neither man noticed Mrs Hudson quietly leaving the room, so deep were they in their individual yet somehow very much shared reverie.


	23. Part 23 (FitB)

Just buttering toast, that's all he was doing; a flick of the wrist here and twist of the palm there. And then he accidently dragged the side of his hand over one of the pieces; the melted butter getting perilously close, drippy as it was, to the sleeve of his jumper. Not a tragedy, really, as it was the brightly coloured one with all of the prancing reindeer on it. It made Sherlock's brain function slower. He'd have to remember that jumper's existence the next time he had something particularly _acidic_ to mop up. Oh God. Then John was _licking_ the butter off of his hand. He couldn't take this; this had to stop.

"John, please try to be civilised and use a serviette," Sherlock said as he walked into the kitchen and sat with huff at the table.

"Yes, I'll make sure I am civil enough if you clean that sludge out of the bottom the refrigerator. I think it may be growing."

"Oh, it is," Sherlock replied as he reached out to snag a piece of toast from John's plate. He wasn't particularly hungry but if he didn't eat something now John would just nag him later; best to get it over with efficiently. As if magicked there, a cup of tea appeared at his elbow. Sherlock glanced up and saw John preparing his own cuppa. He needed to stop getting so distracted over John.

"Thinking about a case?"

"Hmm... When?"

"Just now. You get this sort of faraway look on your face when you're concentrating on a specific problem. It's the face you get when you're working on those funny little maths of yours but in your head. If you're writing them out it's like you could focus a hole right through the table."

"No, no case. I did solve one for Lestrade this morning, though. A husband and a wife killed by the wife's Argentinean lover."

"Ah, Greg mentioned that he might be asking you about that," John said as he sat across the table from Sherlock. "How did you figure it out?" John asked, as he always did. He should have known that there was no need to ask anymore. When John had made it clear that he was absolutely fascinated by Sherlock's deductive process in the beginning not a thing would have stopped Sherlock from sharing it with John, even if he did, occasionally, pretend otherwise.

"Simple, really. It all had to do with the woman's under things. She and her husband had been married eleven years. She had eight matching sets of panties and bras. No woman married to the same person for that amount of time bothers to keep that many sets of matching undergarments. Clearly an affair. She was dressing up for somebody else. In addition to that, she had been having regular tanning bed sessions. She and her husband where about to foreclose on their house and she had just been to the tanning salon a few days ago. This suggested that she was a) not worried about her financial situation here in London and b) most definitely getting prepared to be enjoying some sunny beaches. When Lestrade mentioned the overabundance of leather in the woman's wardrobe—leather bags, leather belts, leather sandals, leather wallets—I requested that he photograph a few items for me. All of them had been crafted by the same hand, rather recently. Many of the belts sported indigenous patterns typically found in Argentina. There is no way that, with the financial situation this woman and her husband were in, she would have been able to afford so much as one of the leather purses she had in her closet, let alone five. They were gifts. Her lover is a leather craftsman from Argentina. He has been working here in London for the past six years but was planning to return to Argentina within the next several weeks. He had planned on taking his lover with him. There was just one problem, she had decided, in the end, to stay." As Sherlock concluded John blinked. And then blinked several more times.

"Extraordinary. You got all of that just from the things Lestrade texted you this morning?" Sherlock nodded in affirmation. "Just extraordinary."

Sherlock smirked in satisfaction. It felt good to have John so amazed with him. They ate breakfast in compatible silence after that. Well, John ate. Sherlock surreptitiously tore up his toast and shoved it, piece by piece, into the pocket of his dressing gown that he had lined with plastic film just for situations like this. And for when he need quick access to the cow eyeballs during an experiment.

Occasionally, Sherlock would catch John looking at him and would worry that John had caught on to his toast smuggling, but John would just smile at him with his eyes, a crinkle in the corner of his left and a small crease between his eyebrows. Sherlock liked all of John's smiles but he liked the eye-smile the best, because it was special. Sherlock was the only one John gave the eye-smile to, he'd checked. John gave everyone else mouth smiles and, while mouth smiles were admittedly nice, none of them got deleted. Yet, every time Sherlock saw that eye-smile he deleted it. He had to. He wanted it to be just as new to study every single time John gave it to him. So, as he tore his toast and sipped his tea, he delete John's eye-smiles, taking each one in as a truly fresh expression of John's to drown himself in.


	24. Part 24 (FitB)

"John, I'm going."

"No, Sherlock. That warehouse is full of gangsters. You are not going in there until Lestrade gets here with backup," John said as he reached out for Sherlock's wrist.

"If they destroy the physical evidence _before _Lestrade shows up I won't be able to prove _to_ Lestrade that the men responsible are guilty, John," Sherlock responded, attempting to shake John off.

"You. Will. Release. Me. I. Am. Going," Sherlock bit out angrily.

"Not. If. I. Can. Help. It," John replied equally as heatedly. The next thing John knew he was slipping down a muddy embankment, Sherlock nowhere to be seen. John was so busy looking for Sherlock, in fact, that he failed to notice the shrubbery which lined the bottom of the ravine he was in before opening into a mostly level plain of shallow water and rocks buried in thick mud that he was sliding towards at a steadily increasing velocity. As a result, when his body was forced down into the mud by the shrubbery and he was deposited into the water head first, he was left unconscious with a bleeding gash on his forehead, many scrapes along the length of his back and several deep scratches on his stomach, chest, neck and face.

Sherlock, meanwhile, was sprinting towards the aforementioned warehouse, completely oblivious to the world of hurt he had flung John into. Neither of the men could have seen from above, in the gloomy dark, that the ravine was any danger to someone finding themselves unsuspectingly chucked into it.

Sherlock managed to retrieve the evidence he had been so desperate for early, quite undetected, before the gangsters had had a chance to get rid of it. He had assumed John would follow him, and that throwing John down the embankment would stall the doctor long enough to allow Sherlock to get into the warehouse, recover what he needed and get out in time to intercept John before John even got close to the gangsters' hideout.

John never came.

Sherlock made it all the way back to the edge of embankment over the ravine, after sending a quick text to Lestrade telling him that he had what was needed, without encountering anything that suggested John had even tried to follow him at all.

Sherlock sat and slipped down into the ravine following the same path John had been forced to take. Being alert as he was, Sherlock was able to navigate the shrubbery John had crashed through and been turned around in, his feet stopping him with a splat in the muddy, rocky waters of the stream. He immediately spotted John. His body's instantaneous reaction was hyperventilation. He forced that down and approached John's unmoving form at speed. Sherlock halted next to John and dropped heavily to his knees, ignoring the pain that spiked through his legs. Sherlock manoeuvred John's limp bulk onto his back and spied the wound on John's head. As his shaking hands wrenched his phone from his coat pocket he calmly catalogued John other visible damage as well as any likely unseen damage. Knowing that an ambulance wouldn't be able to make it to where they were in an acceptable amount of time, Sherlock phoned Lestrade.

"John has been severely injured. I will text you our exact coordinates. I need you here at once," Sherlock said in a high, cold voice. Upon hanging up on Lestrade, not slowing to wait for a response, he opened the GPS application on his phone and copied the coordinates given as his location to a message that he sent to Lestrade, not pausing to sign his initials, as was his custom. After hitting send, he stashed his phone in his coat pocket again finally allowing the dread, fear and guilt he had been keeping at bay to wash over him. There was nothing more he could do for John in this moment than wait and be calmly prepared when Lestrade arrived.

Some hours later, Sherlock sat, still clad in the mud caked cloths of hours before, at John's bedside in a clean white hospital room, clutching the doctor's hand in a grip that would have caused the smaller man discomfort, had he been awake. Sherlock hadn't done a thing more since he got here. He had sat in his soiled cloths, coat and all, with his hands wrapped tightly around John's and stared, scarcely bothering to blink, to breathe, to think. Only waiting; waiting for John to wake up.

A twitch, that was all he need. And there it was. John eyes where moving behind their lids. Sherlock bent forward and pressed his mud streaked cheek to the hand he held, his faced turned to see John's. When John opened his eyes and saw the blatant expression of concern etched on Sherlock usually expression-free face, he knew without a word falling passed Sherlock's lips what guilt and anguished remorse the consulting detective was putting himself through. Sherlock wasn't blocking it off, like John knew he could, but wallowing in it because he thought he deserved it.

"Sherlock," John choked out. "Sherlock, it's okay. I'm okay. I'm right here," John continued to murmur dryly. His hand flexed in Sherlock's. John placed his right hand, the hand that wasn't death gripped by Sherlock, on the consulting detective's mud splattered hair. "Relax, I'm right here, I'm fine."

Sherlock sat silently for a few moments as he pulled himself together. He moved his head up a few inches and brought John's left hand to his lips, mumbling, "I'm not going to ever put you in that kind of danger by my own hand again."

"Sherlock, it's okay—for now. I'm furious with you but that can wait. It'd be enough of an apology right now if you'd get me a cool glass of water." Sherlock immediately jumped from his chair and clambered to the tray standing at the foot of John's bed to pour water from a pitcher there into a plastic cup. His shaky hands carefully carried said cup to John's lips and tipped it to allow the doctor to drink.

John swallowed several greedy gulps, draining the cup. Sherlock made to pour him another but John stopped him, grasping the sleeve of Sherlock's coat, bits of dried earth crumbling onto his clean white bed sheets as he griped at the cloth. "You've been here the whole time." It was not a question, it was an observation.

"Yes, you're definitely back to normal now, stating the painfully obvious," came Sherlock's reply, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth and in the shallow, under-formed wrinkles below his eyes. "The next thing I know you'll be nagging me to eat properly and pestering me to sleep." John grinned up at him, pulling Sherlock down to him and hugging him to his chest. The plastic cup Sherlock had been holding fell with a tinkle to the tiles beneath John's bed, all but unnoticed by the consulting detective.

"You're a bastard. A selfish, insensitive prick," John whispered into Sherlock's dark, mud matted curls. "You're absolutely incorrigible and almost insufferable. Almost."


End file.
